Hefting

A fell sheep is a heathed or hefted female sheep called a ewe. Hefted sheep recognise their own territory: they know their patch, and on the thousands of square kilometres of open fell where they graze with other flocks, they will stick to their own heath.

Because lambs are returned to the fell with their mothers after lambing, they too learn the rules. Hundreds, possibly thousands of years ago, a patient and hardy shepherd tended his sheep on the mountainside, protecting them from wolves and preventing them from straying; little did he know that generations later his legacy would live on in the hefted flocks of today.